


Easy to Remember, Harder to Move On

by ivyspinners



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Allegory, Backstory, Character Study, During Canon, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-24 23:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22005880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: Area sorceress gets everything she wants, realizes it's not enough, and embarks on a tour to find everything she gave up along the way.It goes as well as you'd expect.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 20
Kudos: 159





	Easy to Remember, Harder to Move On

**Author's Note:**

> Work title from Beauty and the Beast's _How Does a Moment Last Forever?_ The concept of Riddling comes from Patricia A. McKillip's _Riddle-Master Trilogy_.

"What do you want?" the Witcher demands once, as captive magic threatens to tear her body apart.

" _Everything._ "

Yennefer remembers answering the riddle, before the question even finished.

"Who was Agnieszka of the Blue Mountain and what did she remember?"

"Agnieszka was born with a curse across her face, which could not be removed, hidden, or accepted. In despair, she begged the spirit of the mountain to spell it away. The spirit agreed, but that which the spell changed, it must first take. 'I will give you power,' the spirit said, so Agnieszka gave it the deed to her farm, but that was not enough. 'I will give you beauty,' the spirit said, so Agnieszka drew the skin off her face, but that was not enough. 'I will create a new life,' the spirit said, so Agnieszka cut out her womb, where new life might quicken, but that was not enough. 'I will give you the love and fear of men,' the spirit said, so Agniezka drew from her temple a silver chain of memories, glittering with all kindness she knew, and all the love she nurtured, and the mountain spirit asked for no more.

"When the chain broke, Agnieszka asked, 'Is this enough?' but there was no response. For she remembered all of herself, except that which could listen, and answer the question, from within."

"And the lesson?" Tissaia asks. Her face is composed, back straight, as though she had not noticed three newly unused desks in their schoolroom, and her expression is expectant. She believes in Yennefer, in a way no one else has. Her, and Istredd.

(She'll grow to hate this god-forsaken fort, on its isolated island. It's funny that being Tissaia's _best student_ means so much that she'll stumble back, one day, as though trying to grasp for something she had lost, irrevocably, though her own choices. Only it will turn out that Tissaia never said that.)

"The person who ends a journey," Yennefer says, here and now, "may not be the person who started it."

Sometimes, with the mist lifting off his eyes, the mayor watches her oddly--without fear, or anger, but a question held within. His mouth shapes words that do not escape. His eyes drift downwards as he sways, torn between what dignity still remains, and sleep.

"Is something wrong?" Yennefer asks, when she tires of his silence. Her nails are painted blue. The butcher's son did it. He had smiled for the first time she'd seen, in her weeks within this city's walls.

"Why?" he finally forces out. Pairs of eyes turn his way, though they look right through them, bespelled. "You bend us under your finger, but we are a small town. Why us? Why here?"

"I like it here," she says.

"You could bend royal courts to your whim--" he says.

"I have," she says, more sharply than intended. Thirty years wasted on stupid men, with their stupid games, in a fucking stupid little world. She swallows. A gesture of her hand, and he stumbles, tumbling head-first into a long night's sleep.

The twenty-odd men and women, long since fallen under her spell, return to their collaboration. Today, it is dance, a way to cross the divide. Yennefer amuses herself, these days, with her own whims. But here, well. She can do better than whatever that wretched Brotherhood offered.

Maybe her rule and amusement will be enough.

Her fifth year in Aedirn, Yennefer uncovers a plot against the king, funded by countryside peasants, to be carried out by the craftsmen of the city. She spends three weeks away from the king's bed, despite his protests.

"I am _trying_ to save your crown," she tells him.

His face pulls into a pout, better suited to a man his son's age. "You should leave that to the guards. Your place is here." He opens his arms.

Yennefer doesn't spend the night with the king again, after that. She does uncover another plot two years later, when the sons of the traitors the king executed return with the same protests; nothing fixed, only everything lost.

Lyria's youngest princess introduces herself by sucking on Yennefer's pinky, with a gurgle of happiness. Yennefer isn't sure how to interpret it. Men's minds are easy to read, women's just so, but there's nothing within the baby's mind except the same impression of happiness she's already crooning.

"Stupid child," Queen Kalis of Lyria says. Her hair is drawn back in elaborate braids; there are wrinkles of worry at the corners of her eyes. The carriage takes off with a jolt. Kalis doesn't look back. "She loves too easily."

"I'm sure you will teach her otherwise," Yennefer says. She tugs her finger out. The baby's face scrunches, red and pink, but settles quickly with a nuzzle from Kalis.

"I'm sure the world will," Kalis shrugs. "Lets see what she can do. Maybe she'll be a better me."

What the babe can do, it turns out, is drown in an unforgiving ocean, face blue and lifeless. Never really stood a chance. Yennefer can understand that. At least Yennefer was only sold for slaughter after being old enough to speak, to impress, to fight back. All the babe knew was being soothed when she cried, and love freely given. She hadn't been old enough to know that her love would not be returned.

Waves lap against the beach, softened and hazy now within the shallows, as the babe's face disappears beneath sand. Yennefer can give the babe some kindness at the end.

But still, many portals and years later, the dark, wide eyes of that babe remain.

She doesn't want--it, exactly. The heaviness of being pregnant, the swollen fingers, the fat ankles, the crick in the back; too many farmer's wives seek her out for such remedies. And babes are such fragile things. Soft flesh and delicate fingers. Incessant, gnawing hunger they are helpless to satiate.

But as people in her life drift in and out without a trace, as _she_ drifts in and out like a ghost, that babe's simple, dedicated, adoration stays.

Someone that loves her whole-heartedly, without reservation--Yennefer wants that terribly.

Maybe it wll fill the hole that's her life everywhere else.

Geralt, for all his muscle and hard lines, makes a comfortable pillow. There's a divot in his chest that cups her cheek, warm and firm. He shivers with her each breath, but doesn't move. His stamina is impressive, no doubt, but so is hers, and they have pleasured each other well this night. She will remember him tomorrow, when she's alone again. But the thought of the night ending is no longer a comfort, the few hours no longer enough.

"The edge of the world," Yennefer says. It had played during their supper, a backdrop to the gleaming fire, the joyful dances. "What was it like, really? What did the bard add that he shouldn't have, and omit that he _really_ shouldn't have?"

A rumble against her cheek, her lip, and sleepy laughter in his voice. "What _didn't_ he change?"

She snorts.

"The elves kicked my arse," he says, voice even, or what passes for _light_ with Geralt. It's all the more surprising that it drops into a a growl next. "Filavandrel spared my life. I gave him some advice. His people who ask to go to war will not be the ones who return, if they return at all. It will not bring them joy."

Beneath the floorboards, a jig ends, and the lyre turns slow, mournful, barely audible. Wind slips in between the window's shutters. Yennefer sits up, chilled. Her talents never lay in premonition, and she's never guided a country into war. And yet.

"What is it?" he asks, thigh tensing.

Yennefer shakes her head. His silence speaks for him, so she says, "Who was Agnieszka of the Blue Mountain, and what did she do?"

She almost hears his frown.

"Agnieszka grew up alone and unloved," he says, low again. "She worked a spell that traded her wealth for power, her skin for beauty, her womb for a new identity, and her love for the fear of men, only to find she was no longer the sort of person who would wish for those things. A tale to scare children against magic."

Yennefer curls her arms around her knees. His hand stroke down her back, warm and intimate. "It's from Aedirn, you know. In the Blue Mountains, the farmers tell the story differently.

"Agnieszka left the mountain, but in a century of wanderings, her new life and new face could not bring her joy. She ached for what she once lost. On the night of Belleteyn, she returned to the Blue Mountain. She tried to claim her farm, but found that four families now lived there, and could not bring herself to push them off the land. In a cave, she found her skin, but it would not cover her face, for she had already grown skin anew. On a ripe shrub of berries, she found her womb, but it would not fit in her, for she had scarred over where it once was. On the mountain's peak, she found a silver chain, but it would not return to her memories, for she had made new memories since then. What was lost was lost forever."

"Trying to find the joys of future from the past is doomed to failure," Geralt says. It sounds like a guess.

"Yes," Yennefer says. She shrugs. "I never liked that version."

His arms close around her waist, tugging her back to him. "You want everything."

She let her eyes drop closed, in the warmth of his embrace.

"Mhm."

Of course, in the morning, Geralt is gone.

With all bridges burned, once, over half a century after they last spoke, Yennefer hunts down Istredd. He had known her, the shocked, angry girl, the sorceress in training. All her helplessness, all her hunger, all the thorns in her brain. He'd loved her.

She smiles, but only for a moment. Even before he turns away, she already feels empty.

She had chosen this--all of this. And she would not wish herself back in her parents' barn, knowing nothing but pain, loneliness, and helplessness. But she wishes that the other choices offered, all those years ago, had gone differently.

Among the dwarves that once ruled Aedirn, there is a different version still. Agnieszka finds no rest in the mines of her youth, and her old tools fit not in her palm. Her sword has rusted; her shield no longer balanced. But a new vein of iron is found within its oldest mines, and from the rock there, Agnieszka forges new armour, a new shield, new rings that spark lightning. In her brief time free, she hammers out pins and brooches, no longer the delicate creations of her teenage years, but sharp like a thorn.

Her new accoutrements fit perfectly.

Yennefer will never learn it. But she'll understand. Nothing old fits when she is so changed.

But _new_ things will.

fin.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is never expected, but always appreciated :D


End file.
